Pulse of The People: A true saint

Kateri Tekakwitha was a saint not because she embraced Roman Catholicism instead of her native tradition, but rather because of her love, compassion and devotion she attempted to bridge the culture gap that existed between her own native tribe the Mohawks and Europeans. A "true saint" encompasses and epitomizes a "universal love" that transcends all religions and cultural traditions.

During the mid-1600s, when Kateri lived, her native tribe was engulfed by an inconceivable catastrophe. In a 50-year period from about 1630-80, the Mohawks may have lost as much as 75 percent of their population to a small pox epidemic that appears to have originated with the Dutch traders in Albany. Kateri's own father died of the pox and she was nearly blinded by it.

Simultaneously, French Jesuit missionaries from Canada were attempting to convert the Mohawks to Catholicism. Kateri's own mother was an Algonquin woman from Canada who had already become a Catholic.

The Jesuit missionaries among the Mohawks attempted to baptize the Mohawk babies dying from the pox and were understandably blamed by the Mohawks for causing the death of the infants. There was a "cultural disconnect" between the Mohawks and the Jesuits.

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Kateri, probably because of her mother's Catholicism, seems to have understood that these Jesuits were devout, well meaning men and not the "devils" that many Mohawks had logically concluded. She defended the Jesuits and attempted to bridge the culture gap that existed between her understandably distraught people and the Jesuits and continued to nurse dying infants until her own death.

Like all "true saints," her spirit continues to be with us even today.